The present invention generally relates to mobile device software, and particularly relates to managing mobile device software.
Mobile device software is conventionally treated as a monolithic entity. Treating mobile device software as such often results in long build times and a large number of build variants because all components of the software are typically linked together at build time. Thus, the entire software package must be re-linked each time a component is added, deleted or otherwise modified. It also takes longer to sign the software because the entire software package is typically signed each time a modification is made. More mobile device resources are also needed to download and install a conventional software package because the mobile device must process the entire monolithic software package each time a change is made to the software.
One conventional approach for reducing the amount of code loaded in order to update mobile device software involves identifying the difference between the current version of the monolithic software package and the new version of the software. Only code corresponding to the difference is downloaded and installed on the mobile device. This approach has been used for FOTA (Firmware Over The Air) upgrades where bandwidth is limited. However, mobile devices tend to be highly configurable. This trend continues to increase as mobile devices become more feature-rich. Many mobile devices now offer the ability to uniquely configure the device setup and many aspects of operation. As such, managing mobile device software is becoming highly end-user specific. This places an inordinate burden on FOTA servers to manage numerous end-user specific mobile device configurations.
Software modularization, where the monolithic package is divided into smaller components that are managed separately, has yet to be widely adopted for the mobile device environment. The OMA Software Component Management Object standardization body is addressing how mobile device software is installed and executed as a group of separately managed components. However, compatibility between heterogeneous software components has yet to be addressed. Incompatible software components can degrade mobile device performance and result in error prone operation. For example, software installed by the mobile device platform provider is typically managed in a different framework than software provided by other sources such as a third-party vendor or a customer of the platform provider. This results in an inconsistent software environment where code and data are not optimally managed. Inefficient or error-prone device operation can result unless interdependencies between dissimilar software components are properly resolved at run-time or install-time. Conventional mobile device software modularization techniques are highly tailored and limited, making it difficult to properly manage different types of mobile device software.